State lawmakers hedged on a threat to withdraw from the No Child Left Behind program - and turn down $300 million in federal money, to boot - but their reasonable objections to the law have been heard nonetheless.

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If the ability of presidential candidates to recover from roundhouse blows delivered with precision to their own chins from their own hands is an appropriate measure of their fitness for the job, Barack Obama might just as well move into the White House now.

Concealed beneath the clamor over the state budget and bills covering such issues as gun rights, mental health and puppy farms were bids targeting the commonwealth’s right-to-work law.

Unrest continues to swirl in the Augusta County Republican Party after being stirred last year by Scott Sayre’s failed primary attempt to unseat state Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Mount Solon.

On the front page of today’s newspaper, in this space and in a guest editorial by Waynesboro businessman and Wayne Theatre Alliance Chairman Bill Hausrath, baseball is again the topic of the day.

I have read with interest the articles about building a professional baseball stadium in Waynesboro.

John Grisham, the trial lawyer turned best-selling novelist who lives near Charlottesville, has linked arms with billionaire George Soros in calling for an end to judicial elections, popular and politicized in almost two-thirds of the 50 states. Such is not the case here, where state lawmakers elect judges, a better but not ideal alternative in Grisham’s view.

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As local public school teachers await word on whether city officials will approve another round of seniority-based raises, here is an intriguing and growingly open secret about teachers unions: they increasingly are the object of disdain among some of their rank and file.

Miffed by our editorial last week backing state Del. Ben Cline’s push to halve what he described as a $26 million advertising budget, a Virginia Lottery official fired off a missive that we published Sunday disputing the figure. Lottery officials say the advertising budget is $20 million, not $26 million.

Since January 2007, Virginia has enticed large companies to expand or relocate here with more than $20 million in tax incentives, ranging from tax breaks to cash grants to job training, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That has resulted in the creation of almost 3,000 jobs.

Today marks the start of an annual journalistic rite: newspapers’ championing open government under the banner of Sunshine Week, which starts today and runs through Saturday.

Amid the rubble of another political career felled by scandal are lessons some people are loath to learn.

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They ran through the Southern Valley District, they pulled off the biggest upset of the year in the Region III tournament on a last-second shot. They’ve done everything they can to turn around a moribund girls basketball program. And, by golly, they sure did.

Letters to the editor

In a Weyers Cave news conference replete with colorful charts and graphs, U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, called for an end to runaway federal spending that has produced a $9 trillion deficit.

Times like these drove Rod Serling to a career of chain-smoking and penning screenplays about such things as mysterious furry monsters lurking on airplane wings.

Their feet firmly entrenched in a mire of red ink, Virginia lawmakers led by Del. Steven Landes, R-Augusta, stand ready to respond to the latest advances of their well-heeled bully suitor, the federal government, with a suitable cuff to the cheek.

Forgive Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for stealing occasional glances at the exit signs inside the Executive Mansion in Richmond. Recent months have borne him all the kindness of a late-night mugging.

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An air of sanctimony and hypocrisy as dense as the wee-hour fog on Afton Mountain hovered about Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s decision last fall to yank state money for abstinence education. Abortion peddlers such as Planned Parenthood hailed the move. Kaine championed it as an act of fiscal prudence, as if trimming $275,000 in state spending might somehow bridge a $641 million budget gap, the financial equivalent of dancing on water.

President Bush has his economic stimulus package and Augusta County supervisors have theirs. Bush sends checks to taxpayers. Supervisors ship money to consultants, some so far away they think Old Dominion is a mixed drink.

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Like Valley foliage in the fall, the capacity of government to exacerbate predicaments of its own devising by exercising precisely the same malformed logic that produced the problem in the first place is always remarkable. Shaken down once more by frivolous feds, taxpayers are the ones who change colors, from healthy hues to a battered black and blue.

Bursting the expanding balloon of euphoria over the ascension of Barack Obama should not be so difficult as Hillary Clinton makes it appear. All that is required is the gentle, but decisive pinprick of reality.

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